The number of workers hired by industrial and service sector firms in November increased 0.1 percent to 8.19 million, as hospitality companies added 2,000 employees, more than offsetting a drop of 1,000 workers at local manufacturers, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The imbalance is likely to continue, as service-sector firms increase hiring to meet demand driven by eased COVID-19 restrictions, the agency said.
Compared with a year earlier, overall payroll expanded 0.35 percent, or by about 28,000 jobs, as more people went out to eat, DGBAS Census Department Deputy Director Chen Hui-hsin (陳惠欣) said.
Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung Labor Affairs Bureau
She attributed the retreat in hiring activity by local manufacturers to global inflation and monetary tightening, which is cooling demand for electronics, the main driver of Taiwan’s exports.
Major tech and non-tech firms are cutting capacity to cope with weak demand and inventory adjustments, which would explain a 2.7-hour decrease in overtime hours from a year earlier to 13.5 hours, the fifth straight month of decline, the latest DGBAS report showed.
By contrast, service providers focused on the domestic market have staged a quick and solid comeback, as companies throw year-end banquets for their employees after a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chen said.
The business pickup is most evident at restaurants, hotels, travel agencies and entertainment facilities, she said.
The high season might extend through the Lunar New Year holiday and the school winter break at the end of next month, she added.
The accession rate — the number of new employees added to payrolls — shed 0.1 percentage points to 2.09 percent, while the exit rate weakened 0.16 percentage points to 1.99 percent, which is positive for labor participation gauges, the DGBAS said.
Also for November, average monthly take-home pay averaged NT$44,682, rising 2.35 percent from a year earlier, the agency said.
Total monthly wages — including overtime compensation, performance-based commissions and bonuses — rose 1.99 percent to NT$51,157, it said.
Workers at financial and insurance companies had relatively high regular wages of NT$64,269 a month, followed by electronics manufacturers at NT$52,382 and overall manufacturers at NT$42,430, it said.
Restaurants and hotels offered relatively low monthly take-home pay of NT$33,499, lower than other service providers, which averaged at NT$34,151, the agency said.
The Ministry of Labor has said that hospitality companies should raise wages to expand their labor pool. Hotels have pressed for regulatory easing so they can hire cheap workers from abroad.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day